Ilya Volkov

Name: Ilya Petrovich Volkov

Gender: Male

Age: 18

Grade: 12th

School: Aurora High School

Hobbies and Interests: Professional wrestling, mixed martial arts, reading, the outdoors, violin playing

Appearance: Ilya is 5'11" in height and 190 pounds in weight. He has a healthy, muscular body with broad shoulders and toned arms. Much of his skin is on the pale side, but less so on his face and neck. His hair is dirty blonde, short and tousled, his eyes are robin's egg blue, and he maintains a slightly darker stubble on his face instead of shaving completely. His face is square and a bit bony, not quite looking appealing enough to be described as chiseled.

When he isn't exercising or practicing his wrestling, he prefers to wear clothing that covers his body whenever the weather allows for it to be worn comfortably. Of these outfits, his favorite, the one he wore on the day of his abduction, is an indigo cardigan, knit blue cap, jeans and boots. He typically stands, sometimes when a seat is available, with rigid posture.

Biography: Ilya was born in 1994 to Petr and Yelena Volkov, in the port town of Magadan. The two of them spent their lives in the town, graduated from the local university, and shortly afterwards got married and had Ilya. Petr worked as a marine biologist, studying the local fish, and Yelena focused on raising Ilya. She harbored ambitions to becoming a gardener, but the subarctic climate of Magadan made that goal problematic. As a result of having a rational, intellectual father and a nurturing, artistic mother, young Ilya grew up to be a calm, bright child. Petr bonded with his father primarily by reading with him, directing and influencing Ilya’s taste in literature until Ilya’s teenage years. Yelena often took her son on nature walks, exploring the wilderness and showing him that even in the frozen oblast of Magadan there is natural beauty. Shortly after the three of them moved to America, they enrolled Ilya in a musical education program to teach him how to play the violin, which he kept to playing on and off throughout his childhood.

Even though Petr’s income from being a marine biologist was comfortable enough to support a family without much difficulty, the two of them were discontented with the idea of living the rest of their lives in the same town they grew up in, Yelena especially. So they saved up and made plans to move elsewhere, finally consummating those plans when Vladimir Putin became Russia’s prime minister in 1999. What the couple had heard of him painted a picture of a man with politics they disagreed with, and the rumors of corruption floating around him didn’t help matters, either. They weighed their options on where to move. Japan was too insular and xenophobic for their tastes, and the other countries on the continent they could travel to had no prospects for them that allowed them to maintain their standard of living. Fortunately, they caught wind of a need for marine biologists in Seattle, and so they sailed across the Pacific Ocean. The move occurred late enough in Ilya’s life for him to remember it, but early enough that he could easily move on and forget the people he knew and most of the details of life in Magadan.

Ilya was five years old when the family moved to Seattle, and as such he was immediately tested for his language skills before he was allowed to attend kindergarten. He did well for his age, but he was still required to take English as a Second Language educational sessions on top of his normal kindergarten assignments. This on top of the occasional difficulty in communicating with his teacher and his fellow students emphasized the difference between him and the native-born Americans he interacted with on a daily basis. Thankfully his parents always took time out of their schedules to help him with his studies, even though their own grasp of the English language wasn’t perfect. They insisted on continuing to teach him Russian as well, making him grow up bilingual.

The heavy emphasis on reading and intellectual pursuits in his upbringing gave him no complaints at first. He liked being praised for his good grades and being smart. But then, later in elementary school, students started complaining about his nerdiness and preference for sitting aside and reading during recess. They pestered him about it until he decided to wrestle with some other kids on the playground. The incident got him in trouble with the faculty, who told his parents and made them lecture him on the importance of playing nice. What Ilya ultimately took away from it, though, was that he enjoyed physical activity, especially roughhousing. As soon as he could convince his parents to let him, he took up martial arts. He continues to train to this day, focusing on whatever style suits his fancy at the time, most recently ones that he's seen used in Mixed Martial Arts programs.

Some friends he met years later introduced him to the world of professional wrestling. He was immediately entranced by the athleticism on display, the spirited competition, and the theatricality of the presentation. The old tapes and pay-per-views he borrowed from those friends were great fun, capturing his imagination more than the books his father was pushing on him. So as his teenage years began, he grew rebellious and announced his intentions to become a professional wrestler as a career. The more his parents tried to talk him out of it, the more he set his mind on making it work as a career.

Ilya was caught up in the thrill of rebellion, though he was always too careful and smart to pick up certain acts of rebellion like smoking, drinking, doing drugs, or skipping school. Instead of angrily dismissing the hobbies his parents coaxed him into liking as a child, he just let them slip by the wayside, such as him putting away his violin and letting it gather dust, or indulging casually enough for it to slip by his parents’ notice.

But as he studied wrestling and attempted to practice all of the other aspects of the craft, he noticed that he wasn’t particularly good at them, nor did he enjoy them. He had no faith in the half-baked wrestling personas he created, he couldn’t imagine himself staying in character at all times, and every promo he taped proved cringeworthy, even by the acting standards of the low-rent promotions he’d seen on the internet. He also learned more about the history of the industry and its major players, and he found it harder to ignore the scandal, ugliness, and bad decisions that plagued the industry.

Fortunately, he found an alternative in his freshman year. He joined up with the wrestling team at Aurora High School, vaguely aware that it differed from televised wrestling. As he adjusted to the differences between the Greco-Roman style of the team and the choreographed, staged wrestling on TV, his cohorts introduced him to UFC and mixed martial arts, which gradually led him to change his career aspirations for good. Despite his parents’ reservations, they eventually lent their support to his athletic aspirations, provided he go to college and make plans for a career outside of athletics. Even if Ilya could make a living with mixed martial arts, it would only be a matter of time before he got past his prime. Knowing full well what it looked like when middle-aged wrestlers tried to perform, he agreed. At the moment his favorite subject and most probably major is philosophy, while his least favorite is biology, to his father's chagrin. He wants to become a teacher in lieu of being an athlete.

Now Ilya has started to pick up his old intellectual pursuits again, spending more time reading books, both for his schoolwork and for his own leisure. Since he only has so much time, and his father impressed upon him the necessity of keeping to a schedule, he does his best to only read the best books, typically sticking with classics, critically acclaimed books which have been hyped as cultural milestones, and Russian works, his personal favorite being The Master and Margarita. He practices his violin just enough to avoid getting rusty, and gets more enjoyment out of demonstrating his abilities for friends than playing in private. Aside from playing music for friends, he also enjoys going on hikes and camping out with them, as well as discussing books he's read.

Ilya is personable and pleasant to his fellow students, more willing than most to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger, though he keeps careful track of the friends he’s made, the closest of which being his fellow wrestlers and book-lovers. He’ll gladly converse about whatever the topic at hand is, even if he knows nothing about it, in which case he’ll try to hide his ignorance and dominate the conversation anyway. He enjoys talking in both English and Russian, though he rarely gets the opportunity to do the latter in person. Instead he frequently socializes with other Russians online, using forums, chatrooms, and instant messengers. During his conversations he often does his best to make subtle jokes and ribbing, some of which are made in less than good terms, and most of which aren’t as witty as the books he took his inspiration from.

His rebellious attitude against his parents has largely faded, and now Ilya is on good terms with his parents, or at least as good as a teenager can be. He’s inherited from his mother his taste in literature, and from his father he got a strong work ethic and a respect for scheduling. Now his scheduling has gotten more detailed than is strictly necessary for him to function, and leaves little room for improvisation when life throws him a curveball.

Advantages: Thanks to his training, Ilya is fitter and in better shape than the average teenager, and is fairly strong as well.

Disadvantages: Ilya has a hard time handling breaks from routine and surprises, and thus would likely be susceptible to ambush and other unpredictable events that would occur in the game.

Designated Number: Male student No. 069

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Designated Weapon: C-4 w/tripwire

Conclusion: Good physical condition, ambitious, and a disadvantage that one could overcome with the proper focus. Does B069 have what it takes to win? Well... C-4 yourself! (I am so sorry) - Dennis Lourvey

'The above biography is as written by Solitair. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: Solitair

Kills: 0

Killed By: Maximilian Sawyer

Collected Weapons: C-4 w/tripwire (designated weapon)

Allies:

Enemies:

Mid-game Evaluation:

Post-Game Evaluation:

Memorable Quotes:

Threads
Below is a list of threads that contain Ilya, in chronological order.

The Past:

Pre-Game:
 * Adventures in Cooking
 * Chaos Theory

V5:
 * Fight the Break of Dawn
 * Birds, Bats, and General Flying Things
 * The Unlucky Clover Field
 * Midnight, The Stars and You
 * Hollow Stars

Your Thoughts
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